ABSTRACT
Chapter 2, ‘Wearable tech and the qualified self: A sociological analysis of South African Strava users’, explores South Africans’ quantified self-representation through their use of the app Strava. Drawing on a survey and in-depth interviews with Strava users, the chapter explores the motivations for, uses of and gratifications involved in self-tracking, within the context of the movement towards the ‘quantified self’. Voluntary self-tracking is widespread and routine, with people becoming reliant on algorithms to manage various aspects of their everyday activities. The chapter draws on the concepts of ‘lively data’ and ‘mundane data’ to explore how the app becomes part of the everyday, and how South African users incorporate this data into their practices and concepts of selfhood and embodiment. The chapter argues that people use Strava as a form of lifelogging to make sense of the ‘self’, creating identities as athletes within an established community of other athletes. The production of a constant stream of personalised geo-data is seen as a form of self-reflection and self-creation. While the gamification of the app promotes competition, South African users are motivated more by self-improvement and motivation, coming to understand themselves and others through the ‘lively’ data traces left by the process of exercise self-tracking.
